Craft Beer brand Brewdog has sparked a debate about sexism after announcing the launch of their new ‘Pink IPA’ beer for ‘girls’.

Rebranding its flagship Punk IPA with a hot pink label, BrewDog revealed in an article that the rebrand was intended to raise awareness of gender inequality.

“At BrewDog, we have always believed that beer is for everyone, and equality is a fundamental right,” a spokesman said.

“So today we are launching a clarion call to end the discrimination of gender pay inequality. In the UK men earn on average 20% more than women. And that’s not ok.

“So ahead of International Women’s Day this Thursday, we are launching Pink IPA. A beer for women. A beer for equality.”

Pink IPA has split opinion

The brewery and pub chain explained that the product was “satirically dubbed ‘Beer For Girls’,” adding that the aim was to “expose sexist marketing to women”.

Brewdog also announced that they planned to give 20% of the proceeds from Punk IPA and Pink IPA sold over the next four weeks to charities that fight inequality and support women – and that on Thursday (International Women’s Day), anyone who identifies as female will get 20% off in all Brewdog bars.

After sharing news of the launch on Twitter, the campaign quickly attracted criticism with some social media users dubbing it “patronising”.

Could have called it Emmeline Punkhurst and avoided the whole Pink for Girls think

Speaking about the social media reaction to the launch Sarah Warman, BrewDog’s Global Head of Marketing told Yahoo Style UK: “We always anticipated that some people might not immediately appreciate the irony of Pink IPA but that did not deter us in our mission to spark a conversation about the gender pay gap.”

“Pink IPA is clearly an over-the-top ridiculing of the types of sexist marketing we often see from brands trying to engage a female audience.

“This beer is part of a bigger campaign that raises awareness of the scourge of the gender pay gap and sexism; two issues we think we should be doing a lot more to solve as a society. We’re proud to donate proceeds from the beer to The Women’s Engineering Society who are doing amazing work at inspiring women to break glass ceilings in the STEM sector.”

As part of the equality campaign Brewdog also intends to publish a full breakdown of its gender pay gap.

So there does seem to be genuinely well-intentioned meaning behind the ‘Pink IPA’ move, but this may be lost amongst the irony.